Vegas Sports Masters

As I write this Friday morning Las Vegas time, the city is still reeling from the incredible finish to Thursday night’s NFL game between the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs. Generally speaking, most bettors were rooting for Kansas City -3. They felt fairly safe with a 24-17 lead late in the fourth quarter.

Not only did they have to sit and watch the aging and fading Peyton Manning drive the field 80-yards for the game-tying touchdown. They THEN had to watch Kansas City fumble the ball way in the final seconds when they should have been taking a knee. Denver picked up the loose ball and ran it in for the game-winning touchdown. Kansas City money that had a chance to push or win in overtime wouldn’t get to see that overtime!

Everyone’s been rightfully blasting Kansas City head coach Andy Reid since the moment in happened. There’s no need for me to pile on here. Sometimes you win a big because the other coach did something stupid. Sometimes you lose a bet because the coach of your team did something stupid. What’s important for students here in my College of Advanced Sports Betting and Handicapping is the knowledge that YOU need to avoid making stupid choices in your weekly attack.

One of the most common things you’ll hear after a boneheaded decision is something like “Well, that had never happened to me before…I didn’t expect it to happen now.” That’s actually the fundamental error that has caused grief of all types forever. A hurricane had never hit us before…the river had never risen that high…I didn’t have a wreck the other times I drove 80 mph. It’s like the turkey on the morning of Thanksgiving. “I had always been so well fed…how did I know the farmer would be coming with an axe that day?”

This is some of the most important advice I could ever give you…because it applies to your everyday life as much as it does sports betting. You can’t rely on your own personal experience alone to make smart decisions. The right move may have nothing at all to do with what’s happened to you in the past. Just because something bad hasn’t happened to you before doesn’t mean it won’t this time.

Andy Reid may have heard stories about…or seen other teams blow games with late fumbles when they should have been taking a knee. It had never happened to him. It had never happened to his running back. He figured it was safe. Well, guess what? It wasn’t. Nothing’s safer than taking a knee, and even some teams have screwed that up! Having your running back go into traffic where defenders are trying to strip the ball from him is a really dumb way to run out the clock in the final seconds of a tie game.

Here in Las Vegas, the most obvious example of this is the “double-up-to-catch-up” strategy. Sports bettors, blackjack players, really anyone gambling will often run into cold streaks that tempt them to make one HUGE bet to get everything back. If it works…they pat themselves on the back for their genius. Unfortunately, the next time it may not work. And, eventually…if you do this enough times…it’s going to blow up in your face. The likelihood of the next outcome is based on the true odds for that outcome…not what’s happened to you in the past! “It’s always worked for me before” can be a really dumb strategy.

You will also see variations of this with:

*Every time I’ve bet on that team in the past they’ve lost

*That team always wins for me

*Whenever I bet Under in the rain the game flies Over

*I’ve never lost Monday night after I had a losing weekend…I should go all in

As hard as it is for many gamblers to accept…what happens on the field has nothing to do with YOU. The teams don’t care if you’re hot or cold…or if you really need this game or are betting for fun…or what happened the last few times you bet the Under. Picking winners means analyzing the teams…analyzing the market…and trying to find good opportunities to make money.

Taking risks is at the heart of gambling. Understanding the true nature of risk as at the heart of successful gambling. Be responsible. Analyze the factors that matter most. Don’t assume that something that hasn’t happened before can’t happen now. Rulers have been overthrown because of that mistake. Stock markets have crashed. (And football games have been lost!)